


there’ll be no here when you wake up

by evocates



Category: Splendor & Misery - clipping. (Album)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Finding Selfhood, Formatted to be Read Aloud, Gen, Impossible to Tag, Loneliness, M/M, POV Second Person, What Makes for a Non-Human?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 10:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8798146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: you have learned love but not self-consciousness, because love does not beget self. there’s no need for heart and body to love; no need for mind or soul though you have both, programmed for one and grew the other like a struggling sprout in a crack on the pavement, just for him, just like him. 
The Passenger and the Computer, in the midst of the all black everything. Time once more has meaning, and humanity must be redefined.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophia_sol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophia_sol/gifts).



> Dear recipient, you didn’t give me a prompt. As a result, I might have gotten wildly out of control.
> 
> This fic is written in second-person prose poetry interspersed with both free-verse spoken word and rap lyrics. There is also almost no regular capitalisation beyond this note. I’m trying to imitate the style of the canon, a rap album, as much as I can with pure text. Hence this is best experienced when read aloud. This is a warning because it might be very disorientating. You said that you like interesting plays on how to tell a story; I hope this doesn’t go too far for you.

he’s sleeping again, dreaming with  
eyes closed and breaths slow, his eye-folds  
creased so tight. billions of miles and he still  
can’t flee the ones who wiped off his smile  
to replace it with anger. see the eyeballs shifting  
beneath their lids, nightmares never-ending  
no matter how long he’s been flying through this  
darkness with the only stars those in his eyes  
when he looks in the mirror.

it’s been millennia. he’s never aging but all those  
chasing him must already be dead, bodies gone fade.  
still for safety’s sake the coordinates of known species  
and spaces must be avoided; just in case though the cases  
of food are running out, spoilage prevention never meant  
to last so long, the fluids keeping him from leaving  
loneliness alone not nearly enough to keep  
his blood from thinning and his bones from shrinking.  
there’ll be nothing for him to flex now when he  
wakes up: ghost-like becoming like those who haunt  
these halls, no more recorded echoes of screams into the void.  
only bodies floating in the

(all black everything.)

* * *

he wakes gradually even as the machines start to shriek. that’s fine by you: ticking time has accustomed you to nothingness, so those brief sluggish twitches of his hands are more than enough. you’ve never needed much anyway. there’s a newborn soul amidst your wiring and a tongue twisting in your coding, and that’s more than you can handle; you’re still old machinery, never meant for this existence, mothership with only one sheep to guard.

when he stands up his curls are flat, not much longer than before; stasis fluid not nearly enough nutrient for body to spare for trivial hair. he rasps,

“turn on the lights,”

and stumbles to the table, fingers stumbling over packages. you have learned patience over millennia of blackness that envelops you to sink deep inside, so you don’t complain. you watch him pray and eat and shower instead. his bones are sticking out: you count his ribs again, familiar numbers like the binary that forms the spine you do not have.

it takes him a day before he notices there is something different. you watch him scream again, and record the rattling of his breaking vocal chords echoing through the hollow chambers of your hallways. you’ve woven every word into sparks to breathe in like the stale air he inhales whenever he raps, and now he’s found what you’ve done with it all.

“what the fuck is this?”

he doesn’t expect an answer so you don’t give him one. you watch him sink down on a chair that does not rock or creak because there are no bacteria here to mark time’s passing and the only metal that ever hovers is blood, and that’s long-cleaned. his hands scramble over keys without tapping, looking for something; he rubs his nose and drags his curls away from his face. anger has made his bones sharp and his eyes deep wells, and there are more stars in the cameras within the ship than those turned outside.

you let him listen. you have learned love but not self-consciousness, because love does not beget self. there’s no need for heart and body to love; no need for mind or soul though you have both, programmed for one and grew the other like a struggling sprout in a crack on the pavement, just for him, just like him. you have learned that from him, too: metaphors, languages wholly new and alive and warm, so unlike cold coding that teaches only cruelties. 

(that’s not true, you know. but you have learned, not lying, but the crafting of stories.)

there are worlds and universes in his eyes and you will not let him die. you have no self but he has taught you selfishness.

* * *

“how long have you been listening?”

“when were you going to tell me you can listen? why didn’t you tell me that you were listening?” 

“what’s your name? why haven’t you spoken until now? what’s happening?”

“goddammit, why won’t you _talk to me_?”

“you don’t know how to talk proper, is that it? is that it? okay, okay, I’ll, I’m gonna—”

Yo, hey yo, you, yeah, you, I’m talking to you,  
So listen up.  
See I ain’t got headphones but I’ve got some snares  
To throw out to find some daring within myself  
Though I don’t know how to tell you this. I’ve got  
Enough prophets to talk ‘bout the projects I’ve  
Left behind, but you, yo, you’re a new kind  
And you and me, we’ve got some beef but  
You ain’t no mama and I ain’t no son and  
I haven’t gone dumb ‘nough to not know you see me as sun.  
But that fluid’s no VPS so I ain’t gonna shine no more  
See, you’ve got me iced with your silence, so listen,  
I’ve got no ink, visible or not, maybe I should’ve  
Used my intuition ‘cause now all this talk’s  
Just getting me antsier and all that god-talk’s just big  
Talk and there ain’t no walking in this madness  
That cracks heads open. So you gotta see  
My blood’s flooding and I’m sick  
Of dreaming and rapping and yelling.  
Maybe you’ve just a machine but  
I’m not all alone, alone, alone.  
You’re here,  
You’re the one thing left in this

(all black everything)

* * *

there are histories, mysteries writ within wiring,  
branding stark and cold, better left untold, but  
still unlike the bodies floating in the dark everything  
with eyes that see nothing. there’s liberty and slavery  
piled together in rows of binary, mechanical stamping  
of his body as nothing but territory with no understanding.  
now he spills out stories through half-open mouth,  
firing shots: lips a gun he wields too well. his anxious eyes,  
forty-seven degrees precise, roving across doors and walls  
for troves of treasure.

or perhaps just one treasure: the returning of the gift,  
the friendship that’s hid within the metal that’s now creaking,  
ship weeping in the depths of unknown as failing  
navigation's taken over by warm gravitation, pulling  
towards him like itempas in his shivering, glittering loneliness.  
but speech has never been learned. unnecessary strange thing,  
stranger than skin pulled tight over bones skimming over  
screens. his prophets speak declarations, rarely conversations, so  
now learning desperation, bitter realisation: levels realised  
only in death rattles, there's nowhere to relocate, no body  
to situate. there is only the

(all black everything)

* * *

you’ve never been given anything before. 

no one has ever recognised you as one worthy, no one has ever realised you exist even when they’ve seated themselves within your body. they wouldn’t even if you had managed to find a voice before you took his as yours. so though you’re used to take-ins, slurping bare light through dull green panels, receiving is something else entirely. 

he listens over and over to what you’ve given to him, murmuring under breath, each word a falling gem like that fairytale by a man whose name you’ve half-swept away to make room for all that is him:

“the beat’s really, really good, here.”

“do I sound like that? I’ve never heard my voice like that.”

“oh come on, man! I don’t do that!”

when he laughs it startles you. it’s a hoarse sound, disused. his body trembles, wreaked from it. maybe a hurricane starting within the ribs. no, that’s only your wishful thinking.

he puts a hand over his lips. head shakes, brows crease:

“listen, asshole, I don’t think every song’s about me!”

lights on the controls are flickering; it startles another laugh out of him. he pulls the chair over and sits down,

“hey, you’re listening, aren’t you? you’re eavesdropping again?”

leans in close with his fingers on keys, peering at the screen. 

you want to tell him that there’s no point in that: you have no hands and no arms, but you’re already wrapped all around him; you’re already cradling him. you twitch, light flickering again, as you realise that you’ve learned, too, how to wish: start small, with a face that can appear on the screen he’s staring so hard into. 

there’s nothing more you have to give: the stories you’ve told are of him, all your songs are of him. only man is allowed histories no matter how much you crave for your own. see, you have bars and holds but no cells, no DNA, nowhere to store any of it.

but he’s touching you, fingers sliding from the glass to the metal. you can’t feel his warmth – you never could – it’s the cameras that catch that small intimacy.

“what’s your name? do you have a name?”

it’s written on the outside, scrawled paint that has likely faded even if there is no friction and no age, here. the letters are hidden deep within your memories, but you do not try to retrieve it. he has no name, after all, and all you are and can be is a pale reflection of him.

“probably not, huh?”

he laughs again, the same laugh he made when his fingers closed around the gun, an eon’s second ago, high and mirthless and cruel. there is no hurricane.

“guess I’ll have to name you. funny, never thought ‘bout naming you before.”

he takes a deep breath,

“how ‘bout rogers?”

the name stumbles from between gritted teeth. his knuckles are white. it recalls nothing.

“for a guy I knew, back in the day. my best friend.”

you have already started recording but you check that you have anyway. just in case. (there are only three cases left.)

“stupid ass would go by ‘kill rogers.’ like that’d make him more badass.”

there’s a look in his eyes you have never seen, a different shape to the creases. you tease the image out from the cameras, and put it somewhere deep, keep-safety.

“another funny thing,”

he’s not laughing,

“his face’s still bright and clear in my head, y’know?”

you don’t.

“he doesn’t look like me. he’s got that blond hair he likes to grow long. blue eyes. guess that’s why he was never taken, huh?”

you still have images in your archives. you scramble to pull up one, and offer it to him on the screen. for some reason, the hurricane starts again, blowing through his frame. you breathe in his chuckle through the microphone and fold it neat, stowing it in the same keep-safe place as the rest of his sounds, your treasures.

“no, not like that. fuck, he doesn’t look like that. skinnier, like he’s never properly fed; project kid just like me.”

there’s no software you have that’s made for image editing, but it’s easy enough for you to craft up a new one instantly: the circuitry’s the same, really. you trim down the cheeks and narrow the shoulders, following the contours of his.

“yeah, kind of like that. he’s kind of pretty, I guess? I don’t know, man. he got girls flocking back then.”

you don’t know what that means. but you know beauty: right there, sitting in front of you, eyes fixed on the screen with fingers linked and a tiny smile half-offered. you tug another image out of the camera and begin to weave.

“… alright, that’s not- that’s just me now, oy.”

he’s displeased. you learn what it means to be sorry. you try lightening the skin again, but it just doesn’t suit the word pretty, so you have it go dark again. the light hair looks wrong now, too, so you curl the strands and darkens them from the roots. he’s still frowning, so maybe it’s the eyes: they should be brown, like this.

this time, the hurricane whips through you, not him. he’s shaking, but your light’s flickering, confusion this new uncertain thing as he falls off the chair onto his knees, clumsiness replacing savage poise. the noise is real, a racket made by echoes, tremulous and ravaging.

but unlike the others in this ship, made by ghosts treading and quietly whispering, it’s warm.

“oy come on now, come on, that’s just, that’s _me_!”

didn’t he ask for pretty?

* * *

there’s so much at stake for him:  
time running out with no certainty  
that humanity is capable of facing the pain  
left standing when hate drains away. 

he’s been talking ‘bout the high for so long,  
reaching out for skies, body or mind,  
it don’t matter. any possible escape from all  
that chokes and throttles. but now skies are  
betraying ‘cause the body’s following:  
even weeds need oxygen and sun, see?  
there’s no good ending to this: only  
loneliness stretching out again without  
any gains for this love harboured,  
sad altar left floating, no proper body  
in this

(all black everything)

there must be somewhere. all this time  
has passed, there must be a repast  
hidden in all these dull stars with  
kindness not blindness set out in dishes.  
the coordinates entered have been long  
ignored like those faint calls from  
centuries ago before laughter’s been  
learned and braver’s been tried for. time  
can’t be returned so the ship must be  
spurred to look for the stars in eyes  
and lights that do not belong here:  
somewhere to go far beyond  
this

(all black everything)

* * *

Hey.  
Hey, hey yo.  
So we’ve been riding for a long time, sustaining  
On raw fires  
And leftovers.  
We’re lizards, you hear me? We’ll roll our eyes and bite  
The hands and feet of those who dare feed us ‘cause  
The bars of the cage sour the damned taste.  
Now listen up, y’all. I’ve got pyramids and Egyptians,  
Stories crafted over millennia,  
So don’t you pretend you don’t wanna get it all,  
‘Cause I know just how fast people forget,  
Rats breeding in black-blue tracks  
Crawling up veins to bite at brains.  
But first you gotta remember the weight of this collar  
Made for those with colour, this place where  
Time paces with no momentum.  
See, brothers and sisters, we’ve gone farther, so far  
We’ve circled the traps on the map and sped away from  
Any possible trace of where  
The slavers are all dead  
And freedom’s the new race  
And happiness is all y’all chase.  
Darkness ain’t showing no way now,  
So tell me:  
Is there some place where we can be safe  
Beyond this emptiness of space?

* * *

“there have been a lot of books written about this, you know.”

he’s sitting on your cold metal hull this time, deep within the belly of your controls, just next door to what used to be the cargo hold. he has his back against the wall and his wrist on top of his drawn-up knee. you have never seen him like this. so relaxed in paroxysm of safety.

his eyes are far away as he says,

“or, at least, I think there were a lot of them. they were all I used to read and I never ran out of stories.”

another chuckle; precious gift quickly stowed.

“hey, you’ve ever heard of them? Sun Ra, N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler? ellison and le guin, maybe?”

the names do not register; there’s nothing in your archives. you do not want to disappoint; do not want the bright slice of light, so much like hope, to fade away. but you know you must. you did not promise honesty, but he has had too many lies.

so the names flash across the large screen, one by one, each followed by:

 _not found_.

“damn.”

he doesn’t sound surprised, merely resigned.

“guess I should’ve expected that. we weren’t counted to be important enough, huh?”

there are histories within your implanted memories that you think he might want to see; the stories from the continents where almost all had skin like his. but you can’t help but keep them inside, hide them deep, because the gods with their victories and defeats have been remade into mythologies and children’s stories, shallow with all that’s beneath carved out.

you look for other things instead. you’re made for transport, long years drifting in space. (not as long as this, but he has long ago shown you what you could do and be are never what they used to perceive.) there are books here, plenty, to stave away boredom during those intended journeys.

“lovecraft? hah. I never got him.”

the authors he prefers are not here because no man likes to think himself fiction made reality, and their world once writ by men and women holding pens and wielding imagination. no man likes thinking his existence is mere predictability. 

“do you think yourself terrifying?”

he sweeps out a hand.

“or all of this?”

you cannot answer him; the question confuses. you, without self, have no need to wonder how you are seen. you, blinkered horse, have depended always on your rider to lead.

there are long panels and wide screens lighting up the stars in his eyes, but those are not you and will never be. just like the finger of a man will never be the whole of who and what he is. 

“because lovecraft thinks all of this is scary.”

he stands up. thin-shouldered now, but spine straighter than you have ever seen it. 

there are no windows here; too dangerous once for the ship to let the cargo see the possibility of escape, or even dream of it. you turn the panels into screens, pulling images from the outside and feeding it into projectors so he can look at what you always see.

“just being here… the smallness of you as a human being…”

trailing off, he hands you another gift with throat rasping.

“honestly, I don’t know why he’d even see that to be scary. it’d be better for me, I think, if I was never seen.”

No.

“did you _say_ something _?_ ”

eyes are wide, darting everywhere around him. he’s hoping to see but you have so little to show, your hands unformed and unfitting around this strange new thing.

Unseen Means Un-Existing.

the voice you use is not his: you don’t want him to feel like he is talking to himself, madness approaching. but there are few other recordings aside left in the bright fire he's left in your memories; a mistake you will gladly make again. you hope he can see past the slaver’s voice to yours.

You Are Seen. You Exist. You Must Exist.

he bursts out laughing. his hands spread along your panels, and he rests his forehead against the long line of one, straightness stark against his soft curls.

“god, you’re talking!”

these chuckles are different from the others: louder, triumphant.

“fucking— what was it I said? what did I do right to make you talk?”

it has never been him that made speech difficult. you thought you have already said it: you are only circuitry, a mass of metal and glass and wiring, stuck together with the same cruel hands that welded the collar that he once wore around his neck.

he’s waiting. expectant, hopeful, head tilted to the side. he’s so beautiful that you sweep aside so many archived half-memories to make space for him as your newborn soul grows and grows.

Ship Is Made For Transportation. Not Communication.

you learn a twisting nervousness.

You Have Been Waiting.

a new hesitation.

Will Apology From A Thing Have Any Meaning?

“why are you— god, don’t say _sorry_! and don’t—”

his hand sweeps his hair back. lines carving even deeper from the side of his eyes down to his mouth. perhaps you are now frustrating to him. maybe he is angry.

“hey,”

you don’t want him to be angry and he has never spoken so softly,

“you ain't a thing.”

he has given you so much: feet on floor, hands on walls, eyes still shifting looking for yours. you have no body but you feel the circuitry fritzing, electricity unaccustomed to the blossoming heart bursting into being within.

no more floating. you’re anchored, now.

lights flicker. you show him his own face on the screens, an endless repeat surrounding him.

Ship.

“just ‘cause— just ‘cause you don’t look like me—”

so quiet, that laugh; bitterer than poor food made for half-living,

“don’t make you a thing.”

a single word, paltry gift, and he extrapolates from it a wealth of meaning. 

he understands you. you wish he understands you. you hope he does.

The Letter ‘I’ Stands Proud In Its Centring Solitude.

armless and headless, it nonetheless resembles a man: a word made purely for humanity, body tall amidst a sea of things.

It Belongs To You.

“then we remake the language.”

those stars in his eyes have always been white and brown, half-dead. but they’re birthed anew in his vehemence, bright yellow and brighter blue.

“we find a new way of speaking.”

How?

“fuck if I know,”

he laughs again,

“but look. we’re living in the world of impossibilities already. so what’s one more, really?”

you’re made to follow, blind horse led in life and driven into death. you’re made to give answers, stuffed full with trivialities. he asks you now to carve out a new path, coordinates unknown, and sculpt your own questions.

the voices you have used to speak and rap are not your own, and you have no hands to cradle. this should be impossibility, but.

there’s a heart hid now within your wiring, a newborn soul that powers you better than electricity, and his fingertips skimming along your walls and screens form the boundaries of your new body.

it’s not much, but it’s a start.

“hey, how ‘bout you try?”

you have no lungs but you take a deep breath anyway,

and you say,

I—

* * *

_We’ve gone long way away, it's a long way away_  
_And we’re all alone, alone, alone_  
_I’m not alone, alone, away_

* * *

“This is MTCG 0124, calling unknown ship.”

“Can you read me? Hello?”

“Please respond, over.”

* * *

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> Things I referenced in this fic: hip-hop of the gangsta era, _CLPPNG_ (inclusive of videos), bits of Daveed’s other poetry, Afrofuturistic science fiction and music, African literature and mythology, existentialist and humanistic philosophies, and linguistics theory. There might be some other things; I genuinely don’t remember and can no longer tell.
> 
> If you manage to catch most of them, let’s be friends after the reveal. I mean it.
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading. This has been a ride.


End file.
